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Walking down rowing’s yellow brick road
The path that leads to the Craig Swayze Memorial Grandstand is paved with gold.
With the combined Senior, U23 and U19 world championships drawing to a close, scouts and agents from the big US Colleges are holding open air meeting with parents and athletes, hoping to bring the best age-group rowers from around the world to their programs.
It’s a long way from Great Barrier Island, where Scott and Isabel Mabey run their 600ha Angus beef farm.
In the nicest possible way, Scott can’t help likening the scene to a stock sale.
In a couple of days, the Mabeys are off on a big road trip across the States. There’s Scott, his wife Isabel, daughter Jess who’s at Princeton as part of the women’s rowing program, Stevie from the U19 Women’s Four and 14-year-old Ritchie, who’s just done his first year as an Under 15 at Auckland Grammar.
The trip is an opportunity for Stevie to consider offers from Syracuse in New York, a place on the Tennessee program with New Zealand coach MJ Keys in Knoxville and finally a meet up with the Cal Berkeley team in San Francisco.
“We're going to go and visit these unis and have a look and see which one she likes, but also the one that we like I guess, because you've got to be comfortable leaving your daughter on the other side of the world,” says Scott.
They’ll stay a couple of nights at each college to get a real sense of the place and people Stevie may well be spending the next four or five years of her life with.
“She actually gets a full experience,” says Scott. “She stays in the accommodation with the rowers for a night or two to experience real life there.”
Stevie Mabey in bow seat of the U19 NZ Women's Four. Photo taken after their A Final at the 2024 World Rowing Championships in Canada. Photo: Art of Rowing.
Being away from home is nothing new for the kids. Jess and Stevie, who’s Head Girl at Epsom Girls Grammar, both boarded at school and Ritchie’s doing the same at Grammar.
The girls learned their rowing from Paul Westbury and former New Zealand and North Shore coach Brian Hawthorne. More recently Brendan Boreham has been head coach.
Brian and Stevie have been keeping in regular contact through the week at worlds, and she and Jess say it’s his mentoring that has got them where they are today.
“We would go out to [Waitemata Rowing Club] and just row with him in singles all through the winter which helped a lot with our summer season,” says Jess. “Especially my last under 18 season, we spent all winter with him in singles and then we got together in a four, and it just went so much better.”
Ritchie’s been spending time at Waitemata with Brian as well.
“It's fun rowing with him, even if you have a little mistake like catch a crab and nearly flip, he just laughs.”
“He's just very, very good old school you know" says Scott. “Some people can't handle the truth and Brian's not afraid to tell it, so that's what we like about him. He's very honest.”
After the schools stopover, the fam says goodbye to Jess who’s returning to Princeton and then it’s home to the Barrier, where the kids grew up being around the water and got their first taste of rowing at speed.
“We've always been a boating family,” says Scott. “Over Christmas we always used to rent out our house and go and live on our boat so by default they ended up on the water. Earliest memory was of them rowing in a little dinghy a couple hundred yards from the boat, and a big shark popped up behind them and I think Jessica probably set a new 200 metre rowing record trying to row back to the boat with a shark after the three of them.”
Scott bought part of the farm off his father, who was a rower at Mt Albert Grammar during their famous Maadi Cup reign in the 1950s.
Scott missed the rowing piece - he went boarding at Wesley College where he played First XV with Jonah Lomu.
He would love to have had the opportunity to row and jokingly wishes he was young again given the opportunities the sport’s giving his kids.
Having three rowers on the go might be expensive but it’s also priceless.
“I'm going to have to find another occupation other than farming, need to find another creative way of making a bit more money to pay all the bills, but it's money well spent. We’d rather spend money on that than anything else really. It's just so rewarding, and it just sets them up for life.”
Jess has yet to declare her major but is thinking of molecular biology with a minor in neuroscience, and eventually a career back home in New Zealand.
“I love working with kids, says Jess. At this stage I want to be a pediatric doctor, probably working in Starship or something like that.”
Jess Mabey stroking the Princeton Women's Four.
The Mabeys’ Guide to Picking a School in the States
Be part of the process to ask the parent questions, like what if they get injured? Does the scholarship still stand? Will they still look after them and keep them?
Talk to New Zealand Rowing’s International Pathway Lead Fiona Bourke. “She knows the whole system inside out.”
“It's about feeling,” says Jess. “You go to so many places and every single place will blow you away because the resources are just incredible. Pick the place that’s right for you.”
Talk to coaches and other athletes in the program.
Andy Hay
Andy Hay is a freelance producer, writer and rowing coach. He was cox of the world champion New Zealand eight of 1982 and '83. He is NZ Olympian #446.
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- Home
- /
- Proof Only
- /
- Walking down rowing’s...
Walking down rowing’s yellow brick road
The path that leads to the Craig Swayze Memorial Grandstand is paved with gold.
With the combined Senior, U23 and U19 world championships drawing to a close, scouts and agents from the big US Colleges are holding open air meeting with parents and athletes, hoping to bring the best age-group rowers from around the world to their programs.
It’s a long way from Great Barrier Island, where Scott and Isabel Mabey run their 600ha Angus beef farm.
In the nicest possible way, Scott can’t help likening the scene to a stock sale.
In a couple of days, the Mabeys are off on a big road trip across the States. There’s Scott, his wife Isabel, daughter Jess who’s at Princeton as part of the women’s rowing program, Stevie from the U19 Women’s Four and 14-year-old Ritchie, who’s just done his first year as an Under 15 at Auckland Grammar.
The trip is an opportunity for Stevie to consider offers from Syracuse in New York, a place on the Tennessee program with New Zealand coach MJ Keys in Knoxville and finally a meet up with the Cal Berkeley team in San Francisco.
“We're going to go and visit these unis and have a look and see which one she likes, but also the one that we like I guess, because you've got to be comfortable leaving your daughter on the other side of the world,” says Scott.
They’ll stay a couple of nights at each college to get a real sense of the place and people Stevie may well be spending the next four or five years of her life with.
“She actually gets a full experience,” says Scott. “She stays in the accommodation with the rowers for a night or two to experience real life there.”
Stevie Mabey in bow seat of the U19 NZ Women's Four. Photo taken after their A Final at the 2024 World Rowing Championships in Canada. Photo: Art of Rowing.
Being away from home is nothing new for the kids. Jess and Stevie, who’s Head Girl at Epsom Girls Grammar, both boarded at school and Ritchie’s doing the same at Grammar.
The girls learned their rowing from Paul Westbury and former New Zealand and North Shore coach Brian Hawthorne. More recently Brendan Boreham has been head coach.
Brian and Stevie have been keeping in regular contact through the week at worlds, and she and Jess say it’s his mentoring that has got them where they are today.
“We would go out to [Waitemata Rowing Club] and just row with him in singles all through the winter which helped a lot with our summer season,” says Jess. “Especially my last under 18 season, we spent all winter with him in singles and then we got together in a four, and it just went so much better.”
Ritchie’s been spending time at Waitemata with Brian as well.
“It's fun rowing with him, even if you have a little mistake like catch a crab and nearly flip, he just laughs.”
“He's just very, very good old school you know" says Scott. “Some people can't handle the truth and Brian's not afraid to tell it, so that's what we like about him. He's very honest.”
After the schools stopover, the fam says goodbye to Jess who’s returning to Princeton and then it’s home to the Barrier, where the kids grew up being around the water and got their first taste of rowing at speed.
“We've always been a boating family,” says Scott. “Over Christmas we always used to rent out our house and go and live on our boat so by default they ended up on the water. Earliest memory was of them rowing in a little dinghy a couple hundred yards from the boat, and a big shark popped up behind them and I think Jessica probably set a new 200 metre rowing record trying to row back to the boat with a shark after the three of them.”
Scott bought part of the farm off his father, who was a rower at Mt Albert Grammar during their famous Maadi Cup reign in the 1950s.
Scott missed the rowing piece - he went boarding at Wesley College where he played First XV with Jonah Lomu.
He would love to have had the opportunity to row and jokingly wishes he was young again given the opportunities the sport’s giving his kids.
Having three rowers on the go might be expensive but it’s also priceless.
“I'm going to have to find another occupation other than farming, need to find another creative way of making a bit more money to pay all the bills, but it's money well spent. We’d rather spend money on that than anything else really. It's just so rewarding, and it just sets them up for life.”
Jess has yet to declare her major but is thinking of molecular biology with a minor in neuroscience, and eventually a career back home in New Zealand.
“I love working with kids, says Jess. At this stage I want to be a pediatric doctor, probably working in Starship or something like that.”
Jess Mabey stroking the Princeton Women's Four.
The Mabeys’ Guide to Picking a School in the States
Be part of the process to ask the parent questions, like what if they get injured? Does the scholarship still stand? Will they still look after them and keep them?
Talk to New Zealand Rowing’s International Pathway Lead Fiona Bourke. “She knows the whole system inside out.”
“It's about feeling,” says Jess. “You go to so many places and every single place will blow you away because the resources are just incredible. Pick the place that’s right for you.”
Talk to coaches and other athletes in the program.
Andy Hay
Andy Hay is a freelance producer, writer and rowing coach. He was cox of the world champion New Zealand eight of 1982 and '83. He is NZ Olympian #446.
